Entered Harvard in the class of 1808, but took part in an insurrection of his class against the faculty, known as the "Rotten Cabbage Rebellion," in 1807. The memory of this disturbance is still commemorated in the name of the "Rebellion tree," standing on the College grounds. As a consequence of his revolt, he failed co complete his College course, although an excellent scholar; but fifty-eight years later he received his degree as of 1808. Removing to Newport, R. I., he continued his studies there for two years, then entered the law-office of his cousin, Francis Dana Channing, at Boston, and afterward went to Baltimore, Maryland, to familiarize himself with Maryland practice in the office of Robert Goodloe Harper. He was admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1811, and settled in Cambridge, where he engaged in politics on the Federal side, and became a member of the legislature.

In 1814 he joined the Anthology club, an association of gentlemen in Cambridge and Boston, including William Tudor, John Quincy Adams, and others, who had for some time conducted "The Monthly Anthology," an unsuccessful magazine. They now projected and began to issue "The North American Review," the first number of which appeared in Nay, 1815. Mr. Dana's first publications appeared in that periodical; among them were an " Essay on Old Times," and a criticism of Hazlitt's "Lectures on the English Poets," in which the writer boldly ventured to dispute the English critic's opinions, He also gave cordial recognition to Wordsworth's poems, an act of temerity which, in the then reigning taste for Pope, brought condemnation upon him. His association with Professor E. T. Channing in the editorship of the "Review" was brought to a close in 1821. In 1821-'2 he published in New York, in six numbers, with the aid of contributions from Bryant and Allston, " The Idle Man," a miscellany of stories, essays, criticisms, and poems, which had marked literary merit, but received little encouragement from the public, and was discontinued. His first poem, "The Dying Raven," written when he was thirty-eight years old, appeared in the " New York Review," then edited by Bryant. He brought out his first volume of " Poems" in Boston in 1827, which was well received by the critics and found a limited audience. Professor John Wilson, in " Blackwood's Magazine," said of the leading poem:" We pronounce it by far the most powerful and original of American poetical compositions." In 1833 "Poems and Prose Writings" (Boston) was issued, containing additional poems and Dana's own contributions to "The Idle Man." A portion of this was republished in London in 1844 as "The Buccaneer, and other Poems."

Although his father had been a Unitarian, the son joined the Congregationalists in 1826, and wrote vigorously against Dr. Channing in "The Spirit of the Pilgrims " during the Trinitarian agitation in New England from 1825 till 1835. Subsequently he became an Episcopalian. In 1850 he brought out a new edition of "Poems and Prose Writings" in two volumes, including his essays and literary papers from the " North American Review," forming a complete collection of his works. His further literary efforts were confined to a course of lectures on Shakespeare, which he delivered in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, in 1839-'40. The larger part of his career was spent in retire-merit from literary work, at his countryseat on Cape Ann (see illustration), and in Boston. For the first fifty years of his life he was an invalid, but after this his health began to mend, and for a number of years he was not only physically well, but main-rained an intellectual vigor that remained unimpaired until within a few days of his death at the age of ninety-two. He had lived through the whole history of the United States under the constitution, and distinctly remembered the death of Washington. He was the last of his generation to achieve success in both prose and verse, and won high rank among the most vigorous American authors of the first half of the present century. He never became a popular writer, and his poetry is now little read ; but it evinced decided qualities of imagination, reflection, and independence, without any noticeable gift of melody. His prose stories, "Tom Thornton" and "Paul Felton," are gloomy in tone, but show vivid imagination and contain brief passages of great excellence. His essay on Kean's acting, in "The Idle Man," and other of his critical essays, prove that he possessed a delicate, firm faculty of original criticism which, at the time when he wrote, was rare in the United States; and his place in the history of our literature should be measured by the important service that a mind like his was able to render in the general cultivation of public taste during the formative period. See "Homes of American Authors" (New York, 1855), and "Bryant and his Friends" (1886).